


14x09 Coda - Let Your Heart Be Light

by FunnyWings



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 14.09 coda, 14x09 Coda, Dean's POV, Episode: s14e09 The Spear, M/M, dreamscape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2018-12-31
Packaged: 2019-10-01 07:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17239628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FunnyWings/pseuds/FunnyWings
Summary: Dean's nightmare hell scape with a distinctly Christmas flavor.Excerpt:Hell is a closet.There’s no room for Dean there, or at least not the Dean he is now. He watches from the doorway as an angel reconstructs a skeleton. He weaves meat onto bone and sews on patches of skin, piece by piece. He looks peaceful doing it, methodical. Dean watches in morbid fascination as the stitches disappear behind the angel’s handiwork, leaving the skin unblemished. Cas paints over the years of endless abuse, too alien to know what he’s doing, what it means.





	14x09 Coda - Let Your Heart Be Light

John Winchester liked whiskey on the rocks.

Dean Winchester does too, come to think of it. Never drinks it though. He wonders why he pours one out in this sad bar at the bottom of an ocean at the edge of a universe lost to time. It seems like the right thing to do. The glass sits on the counter’s edge, and the ice melts as Dean watches. It’s the only surefire method of knowing time has passed, and he idly tries to estimate the minutes. He figures half an hour to leave three small crescent moons clinging to life at the surface. One more dissipates entirely before Dean shakes his head.

“Still late. You’re always late for Christmas,” he mutters, and an overwhelming feeling of Not Yet fills him. He moves on, a slightly watered down whiskey neat waiting on the counter behind him.

*

Hell is a closet.

There’s no room for Dean there, or at least not the Dean he is now. He watches from the doorway as an angel reconstructs a skeleton. He weaves meat onto bone and sews on patches of skin, piece by piece. He looks peaceful doing it, methodical. Dean watches in morbid fascination as the stitches disappear behind the angel’s handiwork, leaving the skin unblemished. Cas paints over the years of endless abuse, too alien to know what he’s doing, what it means.

Too soon. Cas isn’t right yet. He’s all potential.

Dean watches anyway. The body screams as soon as Cas fashions a voice box and sews together a throat. A chin, a nose, ears, lips, and a scalp. Cas doesn’t give him eyes. Not until he presses to fingers to the body’s forehead, lulling the lost soul to sleep.

“Good work,” says Dean, not really meaning it. Cas doesn’t look at him, but he knows he’s there. Subconsciously, perhaps. Dean wonders if this is real, or if it just feels like it is. “You should sign it.”

Castiel returns sight to the man who began the end of days. And then he burns a calling card on Dean’s arm. Or perhaps not even that. A point of pride, ambition even. He doesn’t know this little rebellion, this moment of weakness is a step on a road Cas had had no intention of ever following.

“We need an angel,” Dean says. “For the tree.”

Dean was wrong. Hell wasn’t a closet. Hell is a grave and it smells evergreen.

*

In Charlie’s heaven, it’s always Christmas.

Dean isn’t supposed to be there. Charlie doesn’t say anything about it though. She grins at him in her onesie pajamas, nudging him with her elbows. He’s eight years old and he has a knife tucked into his too big boots. Charlie’s parents are happy to see him.

In the next heaven over, Sam has Thanksgiving dinner with a family that isn’t his own. He isn’t dead, Dean reassures himself. It’s just the memory there. Waiting for him. Dean tries not to be bitter about it as he curls in on himself more. His toes curl up in his boots, and Charlie curls up beside him.

“I miss you,” she says.

“I’m sorry,” he says back.

In Charlie’s heaven it’s always Christmas. Except sometimes Christmas looks like shitty pizza and shittier jokes in an underground bunker. But only sometimes. Only when it doesn’t hurt.

“I’m so fucking sorry,” Dean says.

“Tell me the ladies are devastated,” says Charlie. It sounds funny coming out of her eight year old mouth.

“Womankind might not be able to go on,” Dean says. They don’t talk about the other Charlie. Dean invites her to Christmas. Charlie says maybe, her eyes already drawn to the presents under the tree. She still smiles extra wide, no matter how many times she opens them. She’s always smiles widest when she undoes the wrapping to see shiny lettering reading The Hobbit staring back at her.

*

Michael doesn’t know he’s here.

Dean doesn’t know what to do with that. He knows he should be fighting but he can’t muster the energy. He’s tired.

So he sinks. He sinks into the depths of the ocean, until he sees the monstrous jaws of the creatures that live in the deep.

He bargains with them. Not much, not enough to get a good deal, but enough to gain passage. All it costs is his flesh, his liver, his lungs, and his eyes. His heart he refused to barter, and his stomach is thankfully left off the table. As he is consumed, Dean smiles to himself.

He can’t drown if he doesn’t have lungs.

*

Purgatory isn’t Hell. And yet, Dean is made whole again. Sewn together as if new.

“The things you can do with a needle, Cas,” Dean says, his hand moving to his chest. His lungs are still missing. Good.

Castiel is hiding from him. So is Benny, Dean realizes as no one comes to meet him.

“I brought presents,” Dean huffs. Cas emerges from the shadows, sullenly. Benny remains hidden, and Dean knows he won’t coax him out. He’s too principled for that, but Cas- “You’d follow me anywhere wouldn’t you?”

“Anywhere,” Cas agrees. Dean murmurs the word against Cas’ lips, a stolen moment in a world not his own. Cas doesn’t follow him out of the swirling portal of light. He never does. Dean would stay longer, but the way the hair on his neck stands up lets him know he’s already being tracked down with ruthless efficiency.

Cas is left in the grayness, and in his hands is a note with every four letter word Dean is too afraid to say.

*

The glass of whiskey is empty. Dean takes the glass and cleans it, placing it back behind the bar.

Mary Winchester is sitting at the piano, tapping out the melody to Hey Jude against the keys, hesitantly. She fingers one note after the other. Dean sits next to her. She lets him finish the melody.

“You just missed him,” she says.

“I saw,” says Dean. “Son of a bitch did it on purpose.”

Mary looks at him. She goes back to toying with the piano. She’s doing this the hard way. Dozens of songs could rest at her fingertips, if she wants them to, but instead she’s tinkering with the keys. It’s maddening.

“Can I?” Dean asks. Mary glares at him. “Please.”

“I’m taking your beer,” she says. She gets up and disappears behind the counter. The sound of a fridge opening and closing fills the silence. Mary sits and starts drinking.

Dean begins to play.

“Through the years we all will be together,” Dean sang quietly, the tune coming naturally to him in a way it didn’t in the waking world. “If the fates allow.”

Mary joins in from her spot on the bar stool, and for a moment she looks mom aged. Her hair is lightly greying, and there are laugh lines on her face, and her skin has a slightly weathered look that makes her look tough. The illusion fades soon enough, and there is Mary again, early thirties. Younger than Dean. Too young.

“You’re asking the wrong questions,” Mary says helpfully. Dean keeps playing. “Dean-“

“I don’t want him to find me,” says Dean. Mary leaves him alone after that.

*

“Is any of this real?” Dean finally brings himself to ask.

Billie doesn’t even look up from what she’s reading. Reaperman, Dean reads from the cover. Billie flips the page. He can’t tell if she’s ignoring him or she doesn’t know he’s here. He finds the first option the more believable.

Billie finishes the chapter and sets her book down gently. It’s only then that she looks at him.

“Dying is harder than it looks,” she says to him seriously. “But you are going to die someday. You know that right?”

“Everyone does,” says Dean. “Even you.”

Billie’s scythe is closer to him than to her. She rolls her eyes and leans back in her seat. Dean can see something of the old Death in her now. Something tired, something arrogant, and something beyond sadness. Dean might label it pity if he was feeling generous. But he knows the word isn’t right, because Billie has seen too much to pity any longer. Cold compassion, maybe. The kind of empathy one might feel for a hypothetical ant about to be crushed beneath an unwitting foot.

“Especially me,” says Billie. “Take your best shot.”

Dean doesn’t move.

“How much longer?” he asks instead. Billie doesn’t have to ask him what he means.

“Miles to go before you sleep,” she says cryptically. She goes back to reading.

Dean moves on.

*

Jack plays fetch with a dog.

Dean doesn't say anything, just watches. He leaves the keys behind him. He should probably have left them with Sam, but he can’t bring himself to. If he knows that Dean has given up like this, he’ll try to drag Dean back to the surface. He won’t realize that Dean has found a new way of surviving. It’s the only thing that works at the moment.

*

“You keep running away from me.”

Sam is real. Dean knows he is, but he doesn’t say anything. Maybe if he ignores him Sam will go away. Find some other corner of his mind to get lost in.

“Dean, you have to fight this. Fight Michael off,” Sam insists.

Dean is having trouble thinking of anything other than the fact that Sam is not supposed to be here and he isn’t supposed to see what he is seeing. He stares straight ahead. There’s a whiskey on the rocks at the bar. John Winchester is nowhere to be seen.

“Dean,” Sam says insistently. Finally Dean breaks. The wooden stools splinter, and a crack runs through the foundations of the bar.

“I can’t do it,” he says to his brother. “Stop asking.”

Dean dives headlong into elsewhere to stop Sam following. Dean has been noticed. It’s only a matter of time before the drowning begins again.

*

The bunker is decorated with fairy lights and wreaths, and even an ornamented Christmas tree in the corner. Mary and Bobby drink in the corner, smiling at each other as Rowena rolls her eyes at them and chats with Jody.

The girls are heckling Jack, and he doesn’t seem to know he’s being made a sport of. He smiles, even as Claire grins at him like a shark. Dean calls out to her to take it easy on him, and she puts on the veneer of innocence. Dean wouldn’t be surprised if Alex, Claire, and Patience convince Jack to do something out of the ordinary by the end of the evening. Like drink spiked eggnog or listen pop music. Or worse, EDM. Dean shudders at the thought.

Sam, Cas, and Charlie sit at the kitchen table, and Dean can’t bring himself to approach them. Cas is slightly pink, which means he’s been drinking and he has been doing his best to make the effects last. Dean likes when that happens. There’s something bubbly about the way Cas starts complaining about obscure historical events (the ones he deigned watch from the heavens), or the way he winks too much and not at quite the right times.

“Dean,” says Sam, but it isn’t the right one. It’s the real one. Or the more real one. Dean is having trouble keeping it straight anymore. “You know this isn’t real right?”

“Of course it is,” says Dean. Sam follows to quickly behind for Dean to lose him as he sidesteps from fantasy to memory.

*

Dean is six and he’s sorting through the ornaments that Mary Winchester had left in a storage unit. This is before John Winchester finds Missouri, when he is still looking for answers and finding nothing. He is told over and over again what happened to his wife was an accident. Electrical wiring gone wrong, or something equally lacking in malice.

By the next year, everything belonging to their old life will be sold so John can invest in guns and silver knives and burner phones and books to expand his knowledge.

Dean doesn’t know this. Neither does Sam, two years old next to him and sticking his tongue out to help him concentrate.

“We need an angel for the tree,” Dean tells him self importantly. Sam grows until he’s six feet tall. He looks disappointed. Dean doesn’t change, stubbornly looking through the other ornaments. “I found one.”

“Dean.”

“Dad’s going to be here soon,” says Dean.

He’s not wrong.

*

Michael likes whiskey on the rocks.

He sits across from Dean, wearing his father’s face. It has the desired effect. His vessel looks like a dog that has been kicked a few too many times to ever look anything other than wary. And Sam Winchester is lost again in the recesses of Dean’s mind.

“I told you I’d be here for Christmas,” says Michael, sipping at his drink. Dean’s fists clench and his jaw tightens.

“I guess you did,” he says. “And Sam?”

Michael’s self assured smugness faded a fraction. Dean smiles.

“You don’t know which one’s real,” he realizes. And neither does Dean. Michael scowls at him and Dean laughs and laughs.

*

Hell is a door left open. Dean slams it shut.

**Author's Note:**

> Just doing my part to keep that yuletide gay


End file.
